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Witcher 3 PC Performance Thread

akileese

Member
Played for 3 hours yesterday. Single gtx 980, I5 4670K@4ghz, W8.1, 8gb ram. Everything but hairworks maxed. It stays at 60 fps most of the time. No crashes, no stuttering. Perfect.

I don't think hairworks is worth the performance hit. It doesn't even look that good actually.

Edit: Just remembered that game hangs if i try to set unlimited fps. Also iirc my game is set to borderless window.

I've got the same setup except with a 970 and all of our settings and performance are the same. No performance hits at all.
 

noise36

Member
Any having any issues running the Nvidia experience auto setting for the game?

My only issue is it seems to want to limit FPS to 30 when that doesnt fully utilise my 780GTX.
 

FlyinJ

Douchebag. Yes, me.
Does anyone else only get stutter when turning the camera while moving the character at the same time?

It's so maddening. It's like that horrible microstutter in Bethesda RPGs. The framerate counter is reading a solid 30 the whole time as well, and everything else in the game is very smooth.
 

Serrato

Member
Damn Nvidia Hairworks, it takes so much ressource it's really not worth it. The worst is during cutscenes were I dip in the 20s FPS... it's really bad lol. Otherwise I stay on a perfect 60 most of the time, dipping to maybe 58 rarely. Again, only during cutscene so it isn't that bad.
 

MattyG

Banned
Does anyone else only get stutter when turning the camera while moving the character at the same time?

It's so maddening. It's like that horrible microstutter in Bethesda RPGs. The framerate counter is reading a solid 30 the whole time as well, and everything else in the game is very smooth.
Yes. I've seen people say it's related to items loading it. It's very frustrating, and my only technical issue with the game.
 
I looked through the Geforce guide and lowered the less noticeable settings down one or two notches and then capped it to 30fps with the in-game fps limiter. It's very smooth!

I had my first crash after my first game of Gwent :( Seems like a lot of people are having crashes though.
 

The Cowboy

Member
Tried the hariworksAA tweak, changing it from 8 to 2 is really not all that noticeable - but alas it only gained me about 4 fps and it still tanks with lots of animals :(.
 
I'd go with the 60FPS option. That framerate makes a world of difference imo.

I'd go with 60fps without thinking twice. Only reason I capped at 30 is because even on low, a 680 can't run at 60, so might as well cap it to 30 and play on High with HBAO+.

Yeah, decided to go with the 60fps option in the end.

Whilst it looks amazing at 4K, I just can get used to this 30fps nonsense, it just feels wrong and according to afterburner monitor my 2 GPU's are running at the raggedy edge (90-95%) to maintain the 30fps lock, and I've barely started exploring the game, so there are bound to be instances where the frame rate will drop below 30.

I will not buy Titan X, i will not buy Tiatan X, I will not.......
 
The game doesn't seem to play nice with GeForce Experience... It keeps setting the config file back to default optimal settings with each bootup even if you tinker with the settings in game or the Experience panel.

Going to disable it for Witcher 3 and set it manually.
 

Grumbul

Member
I'm just not buying into some of these 700 series comments.

With a 780 (with or without stable overclock) there is no way I can get a 100% no holds barred 60fps lock wihout dropping everything to medium.

Kepler is dead.
 

Static Jak

Member
The game doesn't seem to play nice with GeForce Experience... It keeps setting the config file back to default optimal settings with each bootup even if you tinker with the settings in game or the Experience panel.

Going to disable it for Witcher 3 and set it manually.

Yeah I had the same happen. Messed up all the settings.
 
Does anyone else only get stutter when turning the camera while moving the character at the same time?

It's so maddening. It's like that horrible microstutter in Bethesda RPGs. The framerate counter is reading a solid 30 the whole time as well, and everything else in the game is very smooth.


I think it is a problem with the frame-timing in their engine; I remember it from the Witcher 2.

Setting max buffered frames to 1 in the Nvidia control panel helps smoothing that out, but you get input lag depending on the value.

I'm just not buying into some of these 700 series comments.

With a 780 (with or without stable overclock) there is no way I can get a 100% no holds barred 60fps lock wihout dropping everything to medium.

Kepler is dead.

Foliage, grass density, Hair works, ambient occlusion and shadows are the FPS killers; turn these settings down because the other settings (especially post-processing) barely have any performance hit. Either that or you have a lot of porn tabs opened.
 
So I downloaded the latest Nvidia drivers and jumped into the game last night.
I’ve got two 970’s, a i7 2600K @ 4.4 GHz, 16 gigs of ram, SSD, etc etc etc.
My monitors native res is 1920x1200.

Everything maxed, Hairworks, HBAO+, all sliders to the far right/ultra… I’m getting frames between 38 and 70. I definitely cannot lock things down at 60… and honestly, the variable framerate look smoother then capping frames at 30. Though I’ve only used the in-game frame limiter. Is there any particular reason it would be worth testing a 30 fps cap set through Riva Tuner?

Performance aside, with everything turned up, the game is gorgeous. I think tonight I will probably tinker around a bit to find out what compromises I need to make to have the game run at 60 consistently. Is there anyone else out there with dual 970’s you have setting recommendations to yield a solid 60?
 

Qassim

Member
After having played more of it, my framerate seems to stay 70+ most of the time even in the open and dense areas (so far at least, not made it to any major city) haven't really seen it drop below 60, super smooth performance. Everything on its max setting with Hairworks off (1080p).

i7 4770K @ 4.5Ghz
2x GTX 780s SLI (Overclocked)
16GB of RAM.
G-Sync monitor
Installed on an SSD (although I haven't really noted if this game is particularly IO intensive or so, so I don't know if this is making any difference in regular gameplay).

I suspect the poorer performance on Hairworks is due to Kepler not being as quick as Maxwell for tessellation, but as I said earlier in the thread, I'm not too keen on how it looks on Geralt so I'm okay with disabling it from that perspective - however I really do wish we could find a way to enable it on the monsters alone, they look really great.
 

tioslash

Member
Running on a i5 4670k + GTX 760 here, locked at 30fps with a mix of Medium/High settings. Didn´t drop below 30 so far.. Not ideal, but 60 is impossible even with all low/off, sooo, it will have to be this.
 

Gumbie

Member
Lock it yourself with MSI Afterburner and half-refresh rate vsync from the control panel. I never rely on the game to do it since doing it myself guarantees smooth results every time.

The in game 30fps lock works great. Why would you want to use a 3rd party program when the in game setting works perfect?
 

napata

Member
After having played more of it, my framerate seems to stay 70+ most of the time even in the open and dense areas (so far at least, not made it to any major city), super smooth performance. Everything on its max setting with Hairworks off (1080p).

i7 4770K @ 4.5Ghz
2x GTX 780s SLI (Overclocked)
16GB of RAM.
G-Sync monitor

I suspect the poorer performance on Hairworks is due to Kepler not being as quick as Maxwell for Tessellation, but as I said earlier in the thread, I'm not too keen on how it looks on Geralt so I'm okay with disabling it from that perspective - however I really do wish we could find a way to enable it on the monsters alone, they look really great.

Seems like Kepler has poor performance relative to Maxwell regardless of Hairworks.
 

Enduin

No bald cap? Lies!
Getting rather good performance for my old rig. I'm super pleased so far. Generally stays at about 42-46fps, with occasional momentary dips into the 30s or spikes in up to 60 in enclosed areas. I'm really impressed at how smooth and fast the game boots and loads. Witcher 2 is abysmal in all of this, just terrible menus and loading all around. Meanwhile W3 boots up in like 2 seconds and everything operates super speedy and smooth. One of the most pleasant and totally painless games launches in a long while.

Motion blur = Off
Blur = On(might be Off)
Anti-aliasing = Off
Bloom = On
Sharpening= On
Depth of Field = On
Chromatic Aberration = On
Vignetting = On
Light Shafts = On
NVidia HairWorks= Off
VSync = On

Ambient Occlusion = SSAO
Maximum Frames Per Second: 60
Resolution: 1920x1080
Display mode: Borderless Window
Number of Background Characters: Medium
Shadow Quality: Medium
Terrain Quality: High
Water Quality: Medium
Grass Density: Medium
Texture Quality: High
Foliage Visibility Range: Medium
Detail Level: High

PC Specs:
i7 920 oc'd to 3.6ghz
Sapphire 7950 3gb
16gb ram
500gb Samsung 840 SSD
Windows 7 Pro

I'll probably tweak stuff to eek out a few more frames and the game does occasionally have a slight stutter to it even if the framerate isn't super variable at the time.
 

owasog

Member
I moved the game from my 5400rpm HDD to my SSD, and the loading stutter is almost completely GONE! Incredible improvement.

It's strange that the game doesn't cache more data. I have 16GB RAM and 3.5GB VRAM, and yet MSI afterburner says that much less than half of that is actually used by the game. A strange decision to stutter-load so much from HDD, when there's so much free RAM for caching...
 

The Cowboy

Member
With the PC ini file tweaking access, anyone figured out how to adjust the camera position? - i realty want it like GTA V (further back and a bit to the side) when on foot. I know this isn't to everyone's taste, but i really like it.
 

Kinthalis

Banned
Getting rather good performance for my old rig. I'm super pleased so far. Generally stays at about 42-46fps, with occasional momentary dips into the 30s or spikes in up to 60 in enclosed areas. I'm really impressed at how smooth and fast the game boots and loads. Witcher 2 is abysmal in all of this, just terrible menus and loading all around. Meanwhile W3 boots up in like 2 seconds and everything operates super speedy and smooth. One of the most pleasant and totally painless games launches in a long while.

Motion blur = Off
Blur = On(might be Off)
Anti-aliasing = Off
Bloom = On
Sharpening= On
Depth of Field = On
Chromatic Aberration = On
Vignetting = On
Light Shafts = On
NVidia HairWorks= Off
VSync = On

Ambient Occlusion = SSAO
Maximum Frames Per Second: 60
Resolution: 1920x1080
Display mode: Borderless Window
Number of Background Characters: Medium
Shadow Quality: Medium
Terrain Quality: High
Water Quality: Medium
Grass Density: Medium
Texture Quality: High
Foliage Visibility Range: Medium
Detail Level: High

PC Specs:
i7 920 oc'd to 3.6ghz
Sapphire 7950 3gb
16gb ram
500gb Samsung 840 SSD
Windows 7 Pro

I'll probably tweak stuff to eek out a few more frames and the game does occasionally have a slight stutter to it even if the framerate isn't super variable at the time.

You can turn Vsync off if you are running borderless window mode. That auto gives you triple buffered Vsync.
 

M.D

Member
Apparently it's not working for everyone, but I've been able to use all of the overlay features by just launching witcher3.exe through Steam.

Thanks, I'll try that

Do I have to download the patch manually if I'm using GOG Galaxy?
 

Enduin

No bald cap? Lies!
You can turn Vsync off if you are running borderless window mode. That auto gives you triple buffered Vsync.

Yeah I realized that as I was writing this up. I literally booted the game up at like 6:55, did a super fast switching of graphics options and started the game to see how it was and never bothered to tweak it since it ran so well and I just wanted to play. That should give me a decent boost as Vsync always seems to put a pretty good 6+ FPS hit on my games.
 

Gibbo

Member
My 290x is handling this game very well . Constant 60fps at 1080p

SSAO, everything max except for Shadows and grass (both High). Hairworks off
 
750ti reporting in here, just called it "the little engine that could."

I'm running a hodgepodge of medium & high settings (with more high), no hair works, nearly all Postprocessing on, 1080p- I'm getting 30fps consistently. Turning off blur takes away any frame drops at all.

Think I have an i5 and 8 GB DDR3
 

kencey

Member
I5 4670k | 280x |

1440p
No Hairworks
Everything on High except Textures on Ultra
AA on
SSAO

41 fps locked
drops to 37 in a few areas. I need that extra 4 ... 5 fps. Maybe if i put shadows on medium ? I'll test this tonight haven't had too much time to play lately.

Also do i need to reboot the game to apply the graphical changes?
 
With Hairworks.

Apart from the line:

Code:
HairWorksAALevel=4

which seems to be missing from my users.settings, but it was in viveks'.



Aw shit. forgot there's a wealth of new configs in there. Back to the drawing board for me then.

I've turned Hairworks MSAA off and there's barely any performance hit now when using Hairworks. But to be honest I don't really notice the hairworks stuff unless I really look for it, and I feel Gerlat's hair looks better with it off.

Gonna increase foliage and shadow view distance and turn Hairworks off, as the LOD is much more noticeable.
 

Wag

Member
I just noticed I forgot to turn SLI back on after installing the new drivers so I was running 4k on 1 old 6 GB Titan. Always remember to turn SLI back on after installing new drivers. 😁
 
Game looks pretty good but the AA jumped out immediately as kind of bad. Seems like in the last year or so anti-aliasing has become a big issue. Seems to have gotten crazy expensive so we're left with inferior options.
 

Static Jak

Member
I've heard rolling back to previous Nvidia Drivers helps with inventory crashes.

Anyone tried this? Does it effect performance much?
 

Durante

Member
Reading through this thread, the one thing I don't get is why so many people chose not to use HBAO+. It's so worth it.

Game looks pretty good but the AA jumped out immediately as kind of bad. Seems like in the last year or so anti-aliasing has become a big issue. Seems to have gotten crazy expensive so we're left with inferior options.
Last year? Where you frozen in carbonite for 10 years? The AA situation has been bad ever since developers started using deferred shading around the Xbox 360 launch.

At least these days we have solid downsampling solutions which catch everything, and some good temporal AA approaches (like UE4). The one in this game honestly doesn't look too bad either.
 

Qassim

Member
Seems like Kepler has poor performance relative to Maxwell regardless of Hairworks.

Ah, I haven't really looked at wider benchmarks, I was just looking at how much of a hit Hairworks has relative to the reports from people on Maxwell GPUs.
 

sgs2008

Member
Yeah, decided to go with the 60fps option in the end.

Whilst it looks amazing at 4K, I just can get used to this 30fps nonsense, it just feels wrong and according to afterburner monitor my 2 GPU's are running at the raggedy edge (90-95%) to maintain the 30fps lock, and I've barely started exploring the game, so there are bound to be instances where the frame rate will drop below 30.

I will not buy Titan X, i will not buy Tiatan X, I will not.......

even sli ttian x's wont get you locked 60 fps at 4 k so no point lol
 

pahamrick

Member
For anyone on nvidia fighting crashes, I haven't had a single crash since switching to fullscreen from borderless windowed -- and that's with using the latest witcher 3 drivers.

Also, anyone found a way to remove the weight limit or make items have zero weight? I'm a super hoarder in RPGs and weight limits are usually the first thing I make go away but I've had no luck finding out how.
 
My laptop with a 980m plays this amazingly 45-60fps. Which to me is amazing, but then again a 980m is a cutdown 980 with some parts disabled because of heat and power constraints, it holds up very well though.

I am playing near ultra settings with AA disabled, SSAO, and foilage distance lowered to high. (Obviously hairworks is off, which doubled my FPS)

I don't really feel like playing this on my desktop since I have a 780 (non-ti) since it's not maxwell.

I want a 980 ti, my friend is enjoying it all maxed with hairworks at 1440p with his titan X...
 

Xasthure

Neo Member
I've heard rolling back to previous Nvidia Drivers helps with inventory crashes.

Anyone tried this? Does it effect performance much?

I tried this. Did not solve the crashing. With the W3-drivers the game for me would freeze anywhere. But with the GTAV-drivers I am possible to play the game, UNTIL I access the menus. Then it crashes. :(
 

realcZk

Member
For anyone on nvidia fighting crashes, I haven't had a single crash since switching to fullscreen from borderless windowed -- and that's with using the latest witcher 3 drivers.

Also, anyone found a way to remove the weight limit or make items have zero weight? I'm a super hoarder in RPGs and weight limits are usually the first thing I make go away but I've had no luck finding out how.

Last I checked no one had figured out how to unpack/modify the rescript files for REDengine 3 yet, so will probably have to resort to using cheat engine for now. I think TW2's were plain lua but thats not the case in TW3. CDPR said they'd release a new ver of REDkit eventually for the game.

Weight is the first thing I mod out, but honestly with TW3 it seems like the items are weighted a lot less, I haven't had an issue yet.
 
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